Quantifiable Evidence of the Importance of Quality Content




Time to Read: 2m 30s

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: quality content is a key factor in the success of your company’s website and, by extension, the success of your company itself. Now, thanks to the good people at Acrolinx, there’s actual, quantifiable data that shows just how true that statement is.

Global Content Impact Index

In creating their new study, titled “The Global Content Impact Index: Measuring Content from Some of the Best Brands in the World,” Acrolinx analyzed written content from 150,000 individual webpages maintained by 340 different companies across the globe—a total of over 20 million sentences and more than 160 million words. The companies examined were wide ranging, from Caterpillar to Kohl’s to the National Australian Bank. Acrolinx utilized a proprietary linguistic analytics engine to evaluate the grammar, spelling, style,  tone, and clarity in this content, and used a 100-point scale to score the results. “To assess a company’s grammar usage,” the report states, “we examined its content against best practices [based on The Chicago Manual of Style] for standard grammar conventions, then calculated how many errors it contained per 1,000 words.” [caption id="attachment_3355" align="alignright" width="405"] Apostrophes: how do they work?[/caption] Ultimately, only 31 percent of the brands evaluated passed muster, notching an “impact score” of 72 or higher. Broken down by industry, retail had the highest cumulative score, at 73.2 percent; telecommunications, despite having “communication” right there in the name, fared worst at 66.2 percent.

What Does This Mean for You?

“Despite the growing adoption of content marketing globally,” Acrolinx states, “[…] we believe there’s a tremendous need for content marketers to renew their focus on improving content quality and clarity.” The study points to a recent survey by Global Lingo, in which 74 percent of those polled stated that they are conscious of the quality of spelling and grammar on company website; 59 percent stated that poor grammar and spelling mistakes would “prevent them from making a purchase from a website because they wouldn’t trust the company to provide good service.” Ultimately, you and your team are the subject matter experts—no one knows more about your company than the people who make it work every day. The information you provide on your website will no doubt be accurate and relevant to your products, services, etc. BUT, you may want to seek outside assistance to ensure that this information is presented in a clear, concise, and linguistically-correct manner. Ecreative offers complete copywriting services, from skilled and experienced writers. We may not know what makes your company tick, but we do know our way around written language. We’ll take the info you give us and turn it into compelling website content that is both informative and easy to read. Contact us today for expert copywriting for your website. We make words sound more gooder! Click here to read Acrolinx’s full report (email signup required). Photo credit: minnepixel / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA